In Absentia
by NJNewmystic
Summary: When a young student of literature discovers reference to a mysterious language which predates the earliest forms of written word, an obsession for the truth begins to consume his life in increasingly peculiar and maddening ways. Before long he is confronted with a cosmic horror like nothing he could have ever imagined and the meaning of his mysterious word: R'leya...
1. PART ONE: A VOID

PART ONE: A VOID

There is a void, a certain missing breath. That twisting and turning articulation of the human tongue now made strange and queer, to hold such syllables inside a man's mouth. It is an utterance, ecstatic, absent from that collective consciousness of human civilization, yet it survives even now.

It is a key, sought after by mad men, by occultists, mystics and academics. And it rests solely in my hands.

Me.

I am the one who discovered it.

Not them.

Me.

The key, it comes to rest in in my palms on a tiny scrap of tapestry, it is a void, and that is to say, it is a single, unknown. A word never seen before in the English language:

"_R'leya"_

And what beautiful and tragic, guttural sounds it makes! It is a word so ancient that it is in effect, unpronounceable to modern day scholars such as you, dear reader, and me.

It was this single, strange word, writ on the scraps of a dying old English tapestry, which prompted me as a young man to devote my life in finding answers to the questions that such a peculiar discovery presents.

_Where did it come from?_

_What does it mean?_

I abandoned myself to my research, leaving behind all promises of friends, of a wife – a family. Those things could wait, I had told myself. _R'leya _could not. I was finishing up my post-graduate in English Literature at an esteemed University, when I first encountered the word. My professor at the time, brought in the tapestry it was scrawled on one afternoon to share with me once his lecture was finished.

The tapestry was unlike anything either of us had ever seen. It seemed to emit a strange aura which drove us to bouts of confusion and that which could only be described as a hinted delirium.

It displayed what appeared to be some of the oldest English text known to man, predating even what had been discovered of the epic of Beowulf. It spoke of patterns in the stars, of peculiar wisdoms carried to clansmen by druids from the Far East; in particular it mentioned great focus on something called _R'leya_.

We could not understand the word presented before us, or its mystical philosophies, my professor passed it off as mistranslation.

I wrote my dissertation on _R'leya._ I tracked it down. Studying its origin by following the only clues I had available to me - the druids who had carried it over from the Far East. Using the names of the other translatable descriptions of the wisdoms these druids brought, I managed to track them and isolate the myth to the ancient land of Mesopotamia. And it was there, that I made a startling discovery.

The word.

_R'leya._

It made an appearance in nearly every ancient language within and surrounding this region. Like an itching at the edge of my brain, I began to feel a peculiar and terrifying knowing, a vague awareness of a strange and literary cosmic terror, which sat just beside, and out of sight of my cognitive faculties.

I started to harbor a peculiar theory, a theory that would be considered blasphemous among the academic community, but try as I might, I could not shake it from my mind. What if; I had somehow stumbled upon an origin dialect? The language, from which all languages derived?

My mind began to travel violently, bordering the walls and bridges of the insane as I considered the repercussions of such a fact. If that were true, then language (being arguably the most important aspect of forming a civilization), was potentially invented by and passed on by a previously unknown culture or people in the early years of ancient Mesopotamia.

Memories of strange and peculiar theories, frighteningly haunting, started to take ground in my brain. Images of ancient Sumerian glyphs supposedly telling the stories of the Anunnaki – the ancient astronauts that had visited the earth eons prior, were dancing in demoniac visions behind my eyes at night.

The years began to pass, flying by like hideous black wings, and I found myself increasingly drawn into strange ideas and conspiracy theories, those which seemed to connect up with a single word which no one knew.

"_R'leya…"_


	2. PART TWO: THE STONE TABLET OF R'LEYA

PART TWO: THE STONE TABLET OF R'LEYA.

As I grew older, and the dreaded peak of my forties drew near, my pursuit into the peculiar word and its theoretical language became nothing more than background noise in my busy life teaching at the university I had once attended in my youth.

Concluding that I had stumbled upon nothing but a dead end in a dark alley, I was content to move on with my life, pursuing my career, and searching (though rather unsuccessfully) for a wife, I had decided to honor my late parent's wishes and settle down and live a normal, simple life.

But _R'leya _had other plans for me. Had I known then what I know now, I would not have picked up the blasted phone that fateful evening, I would have simply gone home, marked student's work and slept off the sense of impending doom and existential abyss that was settling upon my aging bones. But I did not know. And so it was that at quarter to six that evening, my office phone rang, and I answered a call from a peculiar sounding man who worked at the London Museum.

"Hello, is this Professor Carter?" the man asked me,

"Yes," I replied, "how can I help you?"

"Ah, Professor Carter. You probably don't remember me, but you once held a lecture in London that I attended on ancient Sumerian language. You made mention of a source-language that possibly predated early history…"

"Yes? What of it?"

"…There's something… something here I think you may want to see."

Charlie was the man's name, and he had indeed attended several of my lectures held by a much younger man. He explained to me that he now worked at the London Museum, and that just yesterday they had arrive in their catalogue a mysterious stone tablet, found amongst the ruins of a peculiar temple somewhere in the region of ancient Mesopotamia. A stone tablet with an untranslatable language carved into it. A tablet that contained a word that had only been recognizable to Charlie because of his attendance at my lectures.

"_R'leya."_

I packed my bags, dressed up warm and left immediately by train for London city, my old flaming passion now rekindled in light of this latest discovery. Such excitement had burst forth in my mind; for what I knew about a single word from this language may have proven to be enough to unlock information on an entirely unknown ancient culture!

The entire train ride there I was unable to sleep, just knowing that MY Rosetta stone waited for me in some display case, gathering dust. It waited for me. And I would give it a voice.


	3. PART THREE: OUT OF NOTHING

PART THREE: OUT OF NOTHING.

Terror has never before consumed me like it does now. Nothing can hide me from its grasp, nothing can hold back the billions of voices of tormented souls that now hammer against the closet door, blistering my brain and eroding my mind. I fear that I have been driven insane, but I cannot be sure. The paths that lead me here are now fogged over with the deepest of despairs.

I write against the soft-wood wall of this tiny janitor's closet which has become in such a quick amount of time my blessed refuge. I know now that death stalks me, and that _R'leya_ was a warning – that fucking word! It will haunt me onwards into blackest oblivions.

Only three hours ago I was overjoyed, my perceived triumph at discovering the tablet hidden away in this accursed museum being all that mattered to me. I had met Charlie in the Museum car-park after hours, as per his over-the-phone instructions, to begin my studies on the ancient tablet. Charlie, a short, pot-bellied man with a small tuft of red hair protruding from his head had fumbled with the keys for several minutes before letting me in and locking the doors behind us so that no one could walk in while we were hard at work and raid the place for treasured antiquities.

I had launched straight into the translating of the tablet. Using _R'leya _as my source word I began to string together what appeared to be primitive sentences in the strange dialect.

"_Pre'lu tfdu et R'leya. Cesi et o tfdu dt R'leya."_

This sentence, being the first of my discovery I announced out loud, upon noticing its frequent repetition on the stone. When I began to look deeper into the scratchings I started to notice similarities between these words and known old world languages. The tablet slowly, but surely began to be transformed into an informative piece on some kind of summoning ritual.

"_Open (pre'lu) and through (tfdu) the (et) R'leya. The Cesi and through dt R'leya."_

I began to believe that _R'leya_ held meaning as a gateway between worlds. Leaving this sentence behind for a time, I focused on further paragraphs (if one could call them such) and to my surprise found them mostly easy to translate.

"_Open and through, the cosmics pass, great R'leya. _

_The bridge connected, and the cosmics come, great R'leya._

_Open and through, great R'leya! _

_Tremble and fear, great R'leya! _

_We (the first men) locked the way through great R'leya! _

_May it never be opened. _

_Through ritual or spell, may it never be opened."_

An implosion shook us suddenly! Like all noise and air was to be sucked inside a vortex most damnable. And as soon as this imagining happened upon us, we turned and behold! A colossal portal hovered between us in the air, its surface shimmered like translucent glue, and a great lurking fear twisted and curled out from the thing.

My companion and I, in shock stood lost in its gaze, until the unmentionable and unholy occurred. I can scarcely think of it for long, as it causes a nervous panic to override me and I must remain quiet in this closet. Materializing out of nothing like a demon-spawn birthed from the womb of hellish origin, came a hand all gnarled and clawed, as a creature unknown to mankind began to pass through into our dimension.

A great terror over took me, screaming I turned and ran from the hand that was pushing through great R'leya. As I ran, I heard the blood-curdling scream of my companion behind me and the sickening crunch of murder and death at the hands of the thing.

I had no other motive at that time other than to escape. Pursued through the darkness of the Museum, I ran, blubbering with the kind of child-like fear that causes one to slobber and snot all over their knuckles, jammed firmly in their mouths.

Reaching the front door, I grabbed at the handle only to remember in heart-sinking horror that the doors were locked, and the keys upon Charlie's person. Turning frantically, I decided to hide best I could from the being. And here I find myself.

I must recount my horrific tale, if only to warn those that find my corpse, that the gateway has been opened! Great R'leya stirs once again. And it was me who unlocked it. It was me who held the key. Me. Not them. Me. Oh God, that it could have been someone else's error. But I am the one. I hear the creature nearing me, it moves through the room with the sound of a sickly wet slap of flesh against stone. Its presence is palpable and I realize it has caused me to urinate in my pants.

The closet door creaks as something grips its handle, and a dim gloom drifts into my cubby hole, and the hand! Oh God! Its hand! Its hand!


End file.
